Word: planetful
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...innermost planet of the solar system, Mercury is almost always obscured by the sun's harsh glare. Under the best viewing conditions, it never appears as more than a hazy disk in earth-bound telescopes. Last week, as the Mariner 10 passed only 400 miles from the planet, some of the mystery about Mercury was finally dispelled. Radioing back the first close-up pictures of the Mercurian surface, the robot ship unveiled a bleak, cratered and totally forbidding world...
...strong as the earth's) and an extremely thin atmosphere of helium, argon and perhaps other gases (less than 0.1% as dense as the earth's). Although the earth's magnetic field is generally attributed to the churning of molten iron in the spinning planet's core, Mercury seems to rotate much too slowly to produce such a dynamo effect. But scientists offer alternative explanations. Mercury's magnetic field may be created externally by bombardment of charged particles from the sun hitting the atmosphere-or it may be left over from an epoch when...
...data from Mariner 10 at week's end, the champagne-sipping scientists were elated by the spacecraft's performance. They now think that Mariner may have enough fuel left when it again crosses Mercury's orbit in September to guide the ship over one of the planet's poles, which were hidden from view during last week's flyby...
Mariner 10 may uncover even more secrets. The 1,108-lb., bug-shaped spacecraft will make its closest approach to Mercury on March 29-when it will come within 620 miles of the surface. Before it leaves the vicinity of Mercury, it should produce 2,000 photographs of the planet's surface and a flood of other data...
Lopsided Orbit. Usually obscured by the bright glare of the sun, Mercury remains almost as much a mystery as the most distant planet, Pluto. Half again as large as the moon, Mercury may be almost twice as dense. Traveling in a lopsided orbit, it comes as close to the sun as 29 million miles, then sweeps as far away as 43 million miles. To anyone standing on Mercury's surface, the sun would seem to stand still at times, then move backward briefly, in the Mercurian sky. Another oddity: Mercury's trip around the sun takes 88 earth...